Meryl Ampe

8:30 PM: Doors open

A visual artist by training and a sound artist, Méryll Ampe approaches sound as sculpture, a space to be shaped. Between electronic improvisation and noise music, he explores the tactile world of sound, its electrical substance. Volumes and sonic perspectives then appear, in space and in real time, questioning our perception. The listener's body, its surface and its limits, fully participates in this musical experience. Composed of noise vibrations, Méryll Ampe's noise creations offer the ear a subtle journey through modulations, stridency, and saturation. Abstract or carnal world? An infinity of electronic reverberations?

Interview with Méryll Ampe

Could you tell us about the musical project you will be presenting at the next Ars Musica festival? Is it a specific work or does it fit more generally into your overall approach?

During my concerts, I improvise using analog sources, that is, my synthesizers and filters. I conceive of my setup as an instrument that allows me to focus on listening to the present moment and to adapt to the different venues and sound systems I encounter. It will be a unique work, unfolding as the multiple textures, dynamics, and interweavings emerge, sometimes in a controlled way, sometimes unexpectedly.

I engage in a way that is both instinctive and radical. I create massive, organic sonic states that unfold, intersect, and decompose. Patterns can be found within them, or perhaps a kind of arrhythmia. I play with notions and sensations, such as micro/macro, verticality/horizontality, or appearance/disappearance. As if the sonic material I manipulate and sculpt in real time reveals a duality.

As a sound artist and visual artist by training, how does your initial "visual" approach modify your musical approach?

I come from a visual arts background. I studied wood sculpture at the École Boulle in Paris and then at the Beaux-Arts in Cergy. I'm self-taught in my musical approach; I had a particular interest in the cello and drums during my adolescence. In fact, it was these two practices (music and sculpture) that inspired me to explore the medium of sound. In my experiments, the foundation of my sound work, there's a kind of roughness, a porosity that can echo the textures of wood or plaster.

I see sound more as a living material to be sculpted, but also as a material that allows me to express myself beyond words, that allows me to produce things that are "urgent," spontaneous, and alive. Then comes the visual relationship through different dynamics: the planes, the perspectives, the way of carving into the mass that becomes a form. I begin to play, and little by little, something takes shape, is sculpted. I am primarily looking for the plasticity and physicality of sound, such as its volume, its density, something that becomes increasingly massive, vibrating, tense, through bodies, mine and those of the audience.

You thus bring together electronic music, noise, and a visual arts approach that seeks to materialize and make sound visible. Would you describe your work as sound sculptures?

At the very beginning of my work, a few years ago, I started by materializing the sonic medium of "sound" through tangible materials, namely plaster and drawing ( https://meryllampe.com/sculptures/ ). These were questions I asked myself at the very beginning: how to make sound visible through matter? Now, my work has evolved; I am still searching for a plasticity with the invisible. I conduct extensive research to make sound physically felt through vibrations and sonic phenomena. I focus on exploring rough, raw materials to offer a "sensory" experience, to engage the viewer's imagination, to present them with mental landscapes that form or impressions of dissociation, to evoke a duality, to find themselves in a strange state, on rugged terrain, or in the space of the underworld.

You often mention the materiality of sound that noise music allows. Does it also allow you to play with the sensations of listening and the spatial reception of your music?

Yes, noise music, or brutalist music, allows me to play with the intention of capturing the listener's attention, capturing the living body. That's why I play live; it allows me to play more with the space. When I play at a fairly high volume, it allows me to delve deeper into the sound spectrum, to reach the physical and thus create hypnotic sonic phenomena. This leads to sensations, immersion, an intimate experience.

- by Alexandre Castant